An Ember in the Ashes

“You’re perfect for the job, Laia,” Mazen says. “You have all the skills the Commandant would expect from a house slave. She’ll assume you’re illiterate. And we have the means to get you in.”
“What happens if I’m caught?”
“You’re dead.” Mazen looks me straight in the eye, and I feel a bitter appreciation for his honesty. “Every spy we’ve sent to Blackcliff has been discovered and killed. This isn’t a mission for the fainthearted.”
I almost want to laugh. He couldn’t have picked a worse person for it.

“You’re not doing a very good job selling it.”
“I don’t have to sell it,” Mazen says. “We can find your brother and break him out. You can be our eyes and ears in Blackcliff. A simple exchange.”
“You trust me to do this?” I ask. “You hardly know me.”
“I knew your parents. That’s enough for me.”
“Mazen,” Tariq speaks up. “She’s just a girl. Surely we don’t need to—”
“She invoked Izzat,” Mazen says. “But Izzat means more than freedom. It means more than honor. It means courage. It means proving yourself.”
“He’s right,” I say. If the Resistance is going to help me, I can’t have the fighters thinking I’m weak. A glimmer of red catches my eye, and I look across the cavern to where Keenan leans against a bunk watching me, his hair like fire in the torchlight. He doesn’t want me to take this mission because he doesn’t want to risk the men to save Darin. I put a hand to my armlet. Be brave, Laia.
I turn to Mazen. “If I do this, you’ll find Darin? You’ll break him out of jail?”
“You have my word. It won’t be hard to locate him. He’s not a Resistance leader, so it’s not as if they’ll send him to Kauf.” Mazen snorts, but mention of the infamous northern prison sends a chill across my skin. Kauf’s interrogators have one goal: to make inmates suffer as much as possible before they die.
My parents died in Kauf. My sister, only twelve at the time, died there too.
“By the time you make your first report,” Mazen says, “I’ll be able to tell you where Darin is. When your mission is complete, we’ll break him out.”
“And after?”
“We pry your slaves’ cuffs off and pull you out of the school. We can make it look like a suicide, so you’re not hunted. You can join us, if you like. Or we can arrange passage to Marinn for you both.”
Marinn. The free lands. What I wouldn’t give to escape there with my brother, to live in a place with no Martials, no Masks, no Empire.
But first I have to survive a spy mission. I have to survive Blackcliff.
Across the cavern, Keenan shakes his head. But the fighters around me nod. This is Izzat, they seem to say. I fall silent, as if considering, but my decision is made the second I realize that going to Blackcliff is the only way to get Darin back.
“I’ll do it.”
“Good.” Mazen doesn’t sound surprised, and I wonder if he knew all along that I would say yes. He raises his voice so it carries. “Keenan will be your handler.”
At this, the younger man’s face goes, if possible, even darker. He presses his lips together as if to keep from speaking.
“Her hands and feet are cut up,” Mazen says. “See to her injuries, Keenan, and tell her what she needs to know. She leaves for Blackcliff tonight.”
Mazen leaves, trailed by members of his faction, while Tariq claps me on the shoulder and wishes me luck. His allies pepper me with advice: Never go looking for your handler. Don’t trust anyone. They only wish to help, but it’s overwhelming, and when Keenan cuts through the crowd to retrieve me, I’m almost relieved.
Almost. He jerks his head to a table in the corner of the cavern and walks off without waiting for me.
A glint of light near the table turns out to be a small spring. Keenan fills two tubs with water and a powder I recognize as tanroot. He sets one tub on the table and one on the floor.
I scrub my hands and feet clean, wincing as the tanroot sinks into the scrapes I picked up in the catacombs. Keenan watches silently. Beneath his scrutiny, I am ashamed at how quickly the water turns black with muck—and then angry at myself for being ashamed.
When I’m done, Keenan sits at the table across from me and takes my hands. I’m expecting him to be brusque, but his hands are—not gentle, exactly—but not callous, either. As he examines my cuts, I think of a dozen questions I could ask him, none of which will make him think that I’m strong and capable instead of childish and petty. Why do you seem to hate me? What did I do to you?
“You shouldn’t be doing this.” He rubs a numbing ointment on one of the deeper cuts, keeping his attention fixed on my wounds. “This mission.”
You’ve made that clear, you jackass. “I won’t let Mazen down. I’ll do what I have to.”
“You’ll try, I’m sure.” I’m stung at his bluntness, though by now it should be clear that he has no faith in me. “The woman’s a savage. The last person we sent in—”
“Do you think I want to spy on her?” I burst out. He looks up, surprise in his eyes. “I don’t have a choice. Not if I want to save the only family I have left. So just—” Shut it, I want to say. “Just don’t make this harder.”
Something like embarrassment crosses his face, and he regards me with a tiny bit less scorn. “I’m...sorry.” His words are reluctant, but a reluctant apology is better than none at all. I nod jerkily and realize that his eyes are not blue or green but a deep chestnut brown. You’re noticing his eyes, Laia.
Which means you’re staring into them. Which means you need to stop. The smell of the salve stings my nostrils, and I wrinkle my nose.